Gravesend was granted by parliament in 1731 for rebuilding its

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church, as one of the 50 new ones. In 1624, one Mr Pinnock gave 21 dwelling-houses here, besides one for a master weaver, to employ the poor; and here is a charity-school for 24 boys. Population 3119 in 1811. E. Long. o. 22. N. Lat. 51. 27.

GRAVINA, a town of Italy, in the kingdom of Naples, and Terra di Bari, with a bishop's see, and the title of a duchy. E. Long. 17. N. Lat. 41.

GRAVINA'S Islands, a range of islands in the North Pacific ocean, 40 miles in length. E. Long. 228. 24. N. Lat. 54. 52.

GRAVITATION, in Natural Philosophy, is sometimes distinguished from gravity. Thus M. Maupertuis takes gravity for that force whereby a body would fall to the earth; but gravitation for the same diminished by the centrifugal force. See NEWTONIAN Philosophy.

GRAVITY, or GRAVITATION (for the words are most commonly used synonymously), signifies either the force by which bodies are pressed towards the surface of the earth, or the manifest effect of that force; in which last sense the word has the same signification with weight or heaviness.

Concerning gravity in the first sense of the word, or that active power by which all bodies are impelled towards the earth, there have been great disputes. Many eminent philosophers, and among the rest Sir Isaac Newton himself, have considered it as the first of all second causes; an incorporeal or spiritual substance, which never can be perceived any other way than by its effects; an universal property of matter, &c. Others have attempted to explain the phenomena of gravitation by the action of a very subtle ethereal fluid; and to this explanation Sir Isaac, in the latter part of his life, seems not to have been averse. He hath even given a conjecture concerning the manner in which this fluid might occasion these phenomena. But for a full account of the discoveries of this great philosopher concerning the laws of gravitation, the conjectures made by him and others concerning its cause, the various objections that have been made to his doctrine, and the state of the dispute at present, see the articles NEWTONIAN Philosophy and ASTRONOMY.

Specific GRAVITY denotes the weight belonging to an equal bulk of every different substance. Thus the exact weight of a cubic inch of gold, compared with a cubic inch of water, tin, lead, &c. is called its specific gravity. See HYDRODYNAMICS, and SPECIFIC Gravity. GRAY, or GREY, a mixed colour partaking of the two extremes, black and white. See DYEING Index. In the manege they make several sorts of grays; as the branded or blackened gray, which has spots quite black dispersed here and there. The dappled gray, which has spots of a darker colour than the rest of the body. The light or silver gray, wherein there is but a small mixture of black hairs. The sad or iron gray, which has but a small mixture of white. And the brownish or sandy-coloured gray, where there are baycoloured hairs mixed with the black.

GRAY, a town of France, in the department of Up'per Saone, and capital of the bailiwick of Amont. It is a trading place, and seated on the river Saone, in E. Long. 53. 40. N. Lat. 47. 30. GRAY, Lady Jane. See GREY. VOL. X. Part I.

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GRAY, Thomas, an admired English poet, was the youngest and only surviving son of a reputable citizen of London, and was born in Cornhill in 1716. He was educated at Eton, where he contracted a friendship with Mr Horace Walpole, and with Mr Richard West son of the lord chancellor of Ireland. Mr West and Mr Gray were both intended for the bar: but the former died early in life, and the latter was diverted from that pursuit by an invitation to accompany Mr Walpole in his travels; which he accepted without any determined plan for his future life. During Mr Gray's travels, he wrote a variety of letters to Mr West and to his parents, which are printed with his poems; and when he returned, finding himself in narrow circumstances, yet with a mind indisposed for active employment, he retired to Cambridge, and devoted himself to study. Soon after his return, his friend West died; and the melancholy impressed on him by this event may be traced in his admired "Elegy written in a country churchyard;" which is thought to have been begun, if not finished, at this time; though the conclusion, as it stands at present, is certainly different from what it was in the first manuscript copy. The first impulse of his sorrow for the death of his friend gave birth to a very tender sonnet in English, on the Petrarchian model; and also to a sublime apostrophe in hexameters, written in the genuine strain of classical majesty, with which he intended to begin one of his books De Principiis Cogitandi.

From the winter of the year 1742, to the day of his death, his principal residence was at Cambridge; from which he was seldom absent any considerable time, except between the years 1759 and 1762; when on the opening of the British Museum, he took lodgings in Southampton-row, in order to have recourse to the Harleian and other manuscripts there deposited, from which he made several curious extracts, amounting in all to a tolerable sized folio, at present in the hands of Mr Walpole.

About the year 1747, Mr Mason, the editor of Mr Gray's poems, was introduced to him. The former had written, a year or two before, some imitations of Milton's juvenile poems, viz. A Monody on the Death of Mr Pope, and two pieces entitled Il Bellicoso and Il Pacifico on the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; and the latter revised them at the request of a friend. This laid the foundation of an intimacy which continued without interruption to the death of Mr Gray.

About the year 1750, Mr Gray had put his last hand to his celebrated Elegy written in a country churchyard, and had communicated it to his friend Mr Walpole, whose good taste was too much charmed with it to suffer him to withhold the sight of it from his acquaintance. Accordingly it was shown about for some time in manuscript, and received with all the applause it so justly merited. At last the publisher of one of the magazines having obtained a surreptitious copy of it, Mr Gray wrote to Mr Walpole, desiring that he would put his own manuscript into the hands of Mr Dodsley, and order him to print it immediately. This was the most popular of all our author's publications. It ran through II editions in a very short space of time; was finely translated into Latin by Messrs Ansty and Roberts; and in the same year by Mr Lloyd.

From July 1759 to the year 1762, he generally reL sided

sided in London, with a view, as we have already observed, of having recourse to the British Museum. In July 1786, his grace the duke of Grafton wrote him a polite letter, informing him, that his majesty had been pleased to offer to him the professorship of Modern History in the university of Cambridge, then vacant by the death of Mr Laurence Brocket. This place was valuable in itself, the salary being 400l. a year; but what rendered it particularly acceptable to Mr Gray was its being given him without any solicitation. He was indeed remarkably disinterested in all his pursuits. Though his income, before this addition, was very small, he never read or wrote with a view of making his labours useful to himself. He may be said to have been of those few personages in the annals of literature, especially in the poetical class, who are devoid of self-interest, and at the same time attentive to economy; and also was among mankind in general one of those very few economists, who possess that talent, untinctured with the slightest stain of avarice. When his circumstances were at the lowest, he gave away such sums in private charity, as would have done credit to an ampler purse. But what chiefly deterred him from seeking any advantage by his literary pursuits, was a certain degree of pride, which led him to despise the idea of being thought an author by profession.

However, it is probable, that early in life he had an intention of publishing an edition of Strabo; for his papers contain a great number of notes and geographical disquisitions on that author, particularly with respect to that part of Asia which comprehends Persia and India. The indefatigable pains which he took with the writings of Plato, and the quantity of critical as well as explanatory observations which he has left upon almost every part of his works, plainly indicate, that no man in Europe was better prepared to republish and illustrate that philosopher than Mr Gray. Another work, on which he bestowed uncommon labour was the Anthologia. In an interleaved copy of that collection of Greek epigrams, he has transcribed several additional ones, which he selected in his extensive reading; has inserted a great number of critical notes and emendations, and subjoined a copious index. But whether he intended this performance for the press or not, is uncertain. The only work which he meditated upon with this direct view from the beginning was a history of English poetry, upon a plan sketched out by Mr Pope. He has mentioned this himself in an advertisement to those three fine imitations of Norse and Welsh poetry, which he gave the world in the last edition of his poems. But after he had made some considerable preparations for the execution of this design, and Mr Mason had offered him his assistance, he was informed, that Mr Wharton, of Trinity College, Oxford, was engaged in a work of the same kind. The undertaking was therefore relinquished, by mutual consent; and soon after, on that gentleman's desiring a sight of the plan, our author readily sent him a copy of it.

Among other sciences, Mr Gray had acquired a great knowledge of Gothic architecture. He had seen and accurately studied in his youth, while abroad, the Roman proportions on the spot, both in ancient times, and in the works of Palladio. In his later years he

applied himself to consider those stupendous structures of more modern date that adorn our own country; which, if they have not the same grace, have undoubtedly equal dignity. He endeavoured to trace this mode of building from the time it commenced through its various changes, till it arrived at its perfection in the reign of Henry VIII. and ended in that of Elizabeth. For this purpose, he did not so much depend upon written accounts, as that internal evidence which the buildings themselves give of their respective antiquity; since they constantly furnish to the well-informed eye, arms, ornaments, and other marks, by which their several ages may be ascertained. On this account he applied himself to the study of heraldry as a prepa ratory science; and has left behind him a number of genealogical papers, more than sufficient to prove him a complete master of it. By these means he arrived at so very extraordinary a pitch of sagacity, as to be enabled to pronounce, at first sight, on the precise time when every particular part of any of our cathedrals was erected. But the favourite study of Mr Gray for the last ten years of his life was natural history, which he then rather resumed than began; as by the instructions of his uncle Antrobus, he was a considerable botanist at 15. The marginal notes which he has left on Linnæus and other writers on the vegetable, animal, and fossil kingdoms, are very numerous; but the most considerable are on Hudson's Flora Anglica, and the tenth edition of the Systema Natura; which latter he interleaved and filled almost entirely. While employed on zoology, he read Aristotle's treatise on that subject with great care, and explained many difficult passages of that obscure ancient by the lights he had received from modern naturalists. In a word, excepting pure mathematics, and the studies dependent on that science, there was hardly any part of human learning in which he had not acquired a competent skill, and in most of them a consummate mastery. To this account of his literary character we may add, that he had a fine taste in painting, prints, gardening, and music; and was moreover a man of good breeding, virtue, and humanity.

He died in 1771: and an edition of his poems, with memoirs of his life and writings, were published in 4to, in 1775, by Mr Mason. This gentleman, however, instead of employing his own pen in drawing Mr Gray's character, has adopted one drawn by the reverend Mr Temple, rector of Mamhead in Devonshire, in a letter to Mr Boswell; to whom the public are indebted for communicating it. "Perhaps (says Mr Temple) he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally acquaint-ed with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not superficially but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both natural and civil; had read all the original historians of England, France, and Italy : and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his plan of study; voyages and travels of all sorts were his favourite amusement; and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a well-bred man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in

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Gray his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of Greaves. his inferiors in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr Congreve: though he seemed to value others chiefly according to the progress they had made in knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered himself merely as a man of letters; and though without birth, or fortune, or station, his desire was to be looked upon as a private independent gentleman, who read for his amusement. Perhaps it may be said, What signifies so much knowledge, when it produces so little? Is it worth taking so much pains to leave no memorial but a few poems? But let it be considered, that Mr Gray was, to others, at least innocently employed; to himself, certainly beneficially. His time passed agreeably; he was every day making some new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart softened, and his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shown to him without a mask; and he was taught to consider every thing as trifling, and unworthy the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of knowledge, and the practice of virtue in that state wherein God hath placed us."

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GRAYLING. See SALMO, ICHTHYOLOGY Index. In angling for this fish the hook must be armed upon the shanks with a very narrow plate of lead, which should be slenderest at the bent of the hook, that the bait (which is to be a large grashopper, the uppermost wing of which must be pulled off) may come over to it the more easily. At the point let there be a codbait in a continual motion. The jag-tail, which is a worm of a pale flesh-colour, with a yellow tag on its tail, is an excellent bait for the grayling in March and April.

GREASE, a swelling and gourdiness of the legs of a horse. See FARRIERY, No 482.

GREAT, a term of comparison, denoting a thing to have more extension than some other to which it is referred. Thus we say, a great space, a great distance, a great figure, a great body, &c.

GREAT is likewise used figuratively in matters of morality, &c. to signify ample, noble, elevated, extraordinary, important, &c. Thus we say, Shakespeare was a great genius, Da Vinci a great painter, Galileo a great philosopher, Bossu a great critic, &c.

GREAT is also a title or quality appropriated to certain princes and other illustrious personages. Thus we say, the great Turk, the great Mogul, the great cham of Tartary, the great duke of Florence, &c.

GREAT is also a surname bestowed on several kings and emperors. Thus we say, Alexander the great; Cyrus the great; Charles the great, or Charlemagne; Henry the great of France, &c.

GREAT is also applied to several officers who have pre-eminence over others. Thus we say, the lord great chamberlain; the great marshal of Puland, &c.

GREATER TONE, in Music. See TONE. GREAVES, JOHN, an eminent physician and antiquary, was the eldest son of John Greaves rector of Colemore, near Alresford in Hampshire, and born in 1602. He was educated at Baliol College in Oxford, from which he removed to Merton. He was after wards, on the foot of his great merit, chosen geemetry professor of Gresham college His ardent thirst

Greece.

of knowledge soon carried him into several parts of Greaves Europe, where he eagerly seized every opportunity of improving it, His next voyage was into the eastern countries; where nothing remarkable in the heavens, earth, or even subterraneous places, seems to have escaped his nice observation. He, with indefatigable industry, and even at the peril of his life, collected a considerable number of Arabic, Persic, and Greek manuscripts, for Archbishop Laud. Of these he well knew the value, as he was a master of the languages in which they were written. He also collected for that prelate many oriental gems and coins. He took a more accurate survey of the pyramids than any traveller who went before him. On his return from the East, he visited several parts of Italy a second time. During his stay at Rome, he made a particular inquiry into the true state of the ancient weights and measures. Soon after he had finished his second voyage, he was chosen Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford. He was eminently qualified for this professorship, as the works of ancient and modern astronomers were familiar to him. His books relating to oriental learning, his Pyramidographia, or a description of the pyramids in Egypt, his Epoche Celebriores, and other curious and useful pieces, of which Mr Ward has given us a catalogue, show him to have been a great man. Those which he intended to publish would have shown him to be a greater; but he was stopped in his great career by death in 1652

GREBE. See COLYMBUS, ORNITHOLOGY Index. GREECE, the present Romelia, and in many respects one of the most deservedly celebrated countries in the world, was anciently bounded on the north by Mount Rhodope and the river Strymon; on the west by the Ionian sea; on the south by the Mediterranean; on the east by the Egean sea and Archipelago. It extended from Mounts Rhodope and Orbelus to the promontory of Tenaurus, the southmost point of Peloponnesus, now the Morea, about 450 English miles; in breadth from east to west about 235 miles, and it embraced an area of about 57,750 square miles.

The general names by which the inhabitants of this country were known to the ancients were those of Graioi, or Graicoi, from whence the name of Greece is plainly derived. These names are thought to come from Græcus, the father, or (according to some) the son, of Thessalus, who gave name to Thessaly; but some modern critics choose to derive it from Ragau, the same with Reu, the son of Peleg, by the transposition of a letter to soften the sound.-These names were afterwards changed for Achæi and Hellenes; the first, as is supposed from Achæus, the son of Xuthus, the son of Hellen, and father of Ion; or, according to the fable, the son of Jupiter: the other from Hellen, above mentioned, the son of Deucalion, and father of Dorus, from whom came the Dores, afterwards a famous na

tion

among the Greeks. Another name by which the Greeks were known in some parts of the country, was that of Pelasgi, which the Arcadians, the most ancient people in Greece, deduced from their pretended founder Pelasgus, who is said to have got such footing in Peloponnesus, that the whole peninsula from him was called Pelangia. But the most ancient name of all is universally allowed to have been that of Iones, which the Greeks themselves derived from Ion the son of

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Xuthus ;

obliged them to call in Antigonus to their assistance. Greeee. This prince overcame Cleomenes, at the battle of Sellasia, and afterwards made himself master of Sparta. Thus he became a more formidable enemy than the one he had conquered, and the recovery of the Grecian liberties was incomplete.

Soon after this, the Greeks began to feel the weight of a power more formidable than any which they had yet experienced; namely, that of the Romans. That insidious and haughty republic first intermeddled with the Grecian affairs, under pretence of setting them at liberty from the oppression of Philip of Macedon. This, by a proper union among themselves, they might have accomplished: but in this they acted as though they had been infatuated; receiving with the utmost joy the decree of the Roman consul, who declared them free; without considering, that he who had thus given them liberty, might take it away at his pleasure. This lesson, however, they were soon taught, by the total reduction of their country to a Roman province; yet this scarce can be called a misfortune, when we look back to their history, and consider their outrages upon one another: nor can we sympathize with them for the loss of that liberty which they only made use of to fill their country with slaughter and bloodshed. After their conquest by the Romans, they made no united effort to recover their liberty. They continued in quiet subjection till the beginning of the 15th century. About that time they began to suffer under the tyranny of the Turks, and their sufferings were completed by the taking of Constantinople in 1453. Since that time they have groaned under the yoke of a most despotic government; so that all traces of their former valour, ingenuity, and learning, are now in a manner totally extinct.

Modern Greece comprehends Macedonia; Albania, now called Arnaut; Epirus; Thessaly, now Jana ; Achaia, now Livadia; the Peloponnesus, now Morea; together with the islands on its coast, and in the Archipelago. The continent of Greece is seated betwixt the 36th and 43d degrees of north latitude; and between the 19th and 25th degrees of longitude, east of London. To the north, it is bounded by Bulga ria and Servia, from which it is divided by a ridge of mountains; to the south by the Mediterranean sea; to the east by Romania and the Archipelago; and to the west by the Adriatic or gulf of Venice. Its length is said to be about 450 miles, and its utmost breadth about 335 miles. The air is extremely temperate and healthy: and the soil fruitful, though badly cultivated; yielding corn, wine, delicious fruits, and abounding with cattle, fowls, and venison. As to religion, Christianity was planted in Greece soon after the death of our Saviour, and flourished there for many ages in great purity; but since the Greeks became subject to the Turkish yoke, they have sunk into the most deplorable ignorance, in consequence of the slavery and thraldom under which they groan, and their religion is now greatly corrupted. It is indeed little better than a heap of ridiculous ceremonies aud absurdities. The head of the Greek church is the patriarch of Constantinople; who is chosen by the neighbouring archbishops and metropolitans, and confirmed by the emperor or grand vizir. He is a person of great dignity, being the head and director of the eastern church

The